Illusions
by Crowmunculus
Summary: Alphonse. Another name, this one far stronger, much more potent a drug; he's grasping futilely for feelings that are no longer there.


**A/N: Heimunculus in the form of Idolatry meets Pride!Ed. So yes, this is an anime AU merged with a manga AU without any logical explanation in sight. Say A Gate Baby Did It, if it makes you feel better.**

**Wrote this in the middle of the night and wound up liking it, even if the scenario doesn't make any sense. The focus is on character interaction, not plot or circumstances, so I can get away with it, right? XD;**

**FEEDBACK IS LOVE! :D**

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**Illusions**

Pride doesn't know this other homunculus, this tall stranger with warm hands and mournful eyes, but the stranger seems to know him; he drops to his knees in front of Pride and latches onto Pride's legs with both arms, sobbing.

Revulsion flares up, and Pride presses a palm to the stranger's forehead and pushes, trying to pry him away, but he won't budge. He just cries harder and buries his face further in Pride's calf, short blond hair tickling the backs of Pride's knees. Pride growls a warning, when the other homunculus says softly, plaintively: "Edward."

And he can't breathe. The name stirs up memories of memories long forgotten, vague outlines of images that should have been erased but were burned so deeply into his soul that their ghosts lingered after and had been buried all this time. He doesn't know "Edward" any more than he knows the person kneeling before him, he doesn't know the memories though he knows that they are there, and the name takes the breath from his lungs and he doesn't know why.

"Edward," the stranger repeats, desperately, "Edward, it's me, it's Alfons. Edward, say something!"

_Alphonse_. Another name, this one far stronger, much more potent a drug; he's grasping futilely for feelings that are no longer there. He wants to say something – he wants to say so many things, he doesn't have the words for the emotions screaming echoes back to him from years ago, he doesn't even know what it all means – but he can't, so he says "That's a human name."

"I _am_ human, and so are you," the stranger says adamantly, and his disbelief is so absolute, so full of quivering fear, that Pride knows that he knows it isn't true. "I found you. I'm so glad I found you…" The rest of the words come in a crooning babble, his voice is so wavering, a long, feeble note on a breaking string, that Pride can't make sense of it.

He's not sure why, but something in him is compelled to _move_ and he kneels down so he is eye-to-eye with this other, with this Alphonse. The stranger's eyes, like his own eyes, are not the customary homunculus violet, but a strangely heartbreaking blue. His face is so familiar-but-not that it _hurts._

The words slow to a stop, and Alphonse leans their foreheads together until they touch, searching his eyes for recognition. Alphonse's own eyes are large and trusting, open and bright. The color – like bluebird's wings – is wrong, somehow; he doesn't know why it's wrong, but he knows that it is. He wants those eyes to be gold, more like his own.

"Do you remember me?" It's hardly a whisper.

He _wants_ to remember – and he's never wanted to remember before, Father told him that the memories he could never quite grasp were the previous Pride's and he had no reason to worry over them, but now he has a reason and now that he's so close he _wants_ to remember. It hurts to not remember, just like Alphonse's eyes hurt in a strange, disconnected sense, a profound unsettling disquiet eating him away from the inside over the years.

"I want to."

Those wide Al-eyes clench shut tight in pain, and when they open again they're sad, broken, but resolute, as if accepting some horrible truth. "Then I will call you…Brother."

And that is what he remembers. "A-Al?" He's shaky, disbelieving; he still does not quite remember, but he remembers _Al_, the idea of an Al; he remembers that he loves Al more than he has ever loved anyone or anything in the entire world. He remembers that Al is his brother.

"Yes," says Al, and Pride _collapses_ into him, and now he is the one clinging and sobbing in great shuddering gasps. Al smooths his hair back and holds him close and whispers more of those fragile, aching words too soft to make out, and Pride cries "I love you, I love you, I love you…"

.

And that is what he remembers. Because Edward only ever did love his brother, and Alfons only ever wanted him happy, and if this is the price he has to pay, so be it.


End file.
